i kind of have to laugh for i am reminded of a Christmas present i bought mom and dad a few years ago and they were convinced at the time that they would not be able to use it because it didn't have a floppy drive

Wonderful job, idk what happen to my email subscription but great job so far, read from 2 pages back to see what was happening till now.

Really excited to test it out and thanks for looking into the cd/dvd rom glitch error, hopefully by the time with the other issues, there won't be any problems with MCE 2005 from disk.

I over read about the limit of 4GB for being 32bit, was that the part being illegal to patch to get past the 4GB mark or was that the other thing he was talking about? bc that would be an excellent patch to have done to do.

If it is illegal to do that, why would it be? Microsoft left Windows XP and already updating security patches by that Professional Security Guy, if that wasn't what you/he was talking about then nvrm.

i tried about four or five different PAE patches to increase RAM limit...
my attempts were in Win7 with 8GB RAM and eight-core CPU...
i "hate" 64bit and *HIGHLY* prefer 32bit OS's (for software reasons, not hardware)...

i found NONE of them to be *STABLE*...
and so i go ahead and run 64bit Win7 but do almost *EVERYTHING* inside a 32bit WinXP VirtualBox...

Everything else seem to be fine. I have tested this on a
Compaq Armada E500 800 MHz CPU, 512MB Ram, 40GB Seagate HDD.
The system is very snappy to be so old. I'm actually selling it this weekend. Thanks again.

UPDATE: Many xpfixit-related glitches have been fixed. Trying to fix issue with Windows NT Upgrade installations: SWENUM Runonce keys will not run (access to rundll32 denied). If someone knows more about this failure, please report it here.

For the moment I will try to digitally sign all syssetup.inf-referenced device installation files using the syssetup.inf catalog file (sp4inf.cat).

@harkaz/all
You probably also included the Calculator Plus in you Server Pack 4, how did you do it?
If i add the line "calcplus.chm = 1,,,,,,,,3,3" in the "TXTSETUP.SIF" file and then also add the line "calcplus.chm" into the the "ACCESSOR.INF" file section "[CalcCopyFilesHelp]" then the components are getting installed.
But when add the line "calcplus.chm = 1,,,,,,,21,0,0" to the TXTSETUP.SIF" file then everything is working. But should this not be work with "1,,,,,,,,3,3" since that's also the default one for the "calc.chm" file or i'm doing something wrong here.

@ Outbreaker Add calcplus.chm to the respective accessor.inf copy section and keep the 100,,,,,,,,3,3 reference in TXTSETUP (calcplus.chm is a new file).

I haven't included Calculator Plus in my SP yet.

NEWS: Windows 2000 Upgrade issue is *VERY* INTERESTING... It seems not a signing issue at all, since it does not appear during clean installation or when tested with the original INF files. In addition, the same problem has been reproduced with Onepiece's post-SP3 update pack. I will soon test this with other update packs as well... This means that most likely an updated file in SP4/OP update pack causes Windows 2000 upgrade issues: setup cannot invoke any external programs at all, not just SWENUM runonce keys...

This is the error you will get:

I need your help fixing this one... Any ideas?

UPDATE: Could it be layout.inf file size check?
Windows XP SP4 Milestone 1 worked fine... Let's go back in time to see when the problem started...

When i look on you image, i have some ideas. Maybe is problem during upgrade inside INF directory reference. In picture is rundll32.exe called from C:\WINNT but you installing XP and XP files could be in C:\Windows

In some inf must be problem with reference. %10% could be C:\WINNT or C:\Windows. This can in my opinion make a bug in setup. But you can try it to change to %24%\Windows.. Maybe.. Or %16420% is same as %10% but it can be problem in XP upgrade process

I never tried upgrade process, its crappy reinstall.. Its Not recomended and i never modified upgrade files

EDIT: 2k must refer to C:\WINNT if the setup is call from 2k enviroment

Your windows 2000 issue likely lies within the txtsetup numbering, the part that says 100 cannot be understood by win2k you need to change them to simply 1 (this will not effect xp setups at all as xp reads both 100 & 1 the same)

PAE patch in my test works fine, no issue encountered so far I have repatch it till the last version. It use patched hal and 2003's usbport driver and that's the bad thing in term of setup... I need to use /NOLOWMEM in boot.ini too.

Some of them, when extracted, have a different (long) file name and extension. I need a decompression app which preserves the original file names and forces short extensions. Or should I create one on my own?

- If NtComponents line is not present the OC Manager Window appears.
- If NtComponents line is present the OC Manager Window DOES NOT appear
- In both cases the "Installing components" guide appears during component installation. This is preferable to an inaccurate T- meter with billboard text.
- No setuperr.log errors reported.
Combined with a simple syssetup.dll patch it's the ideal way to have OC Manager support in XP Setup.

@PROBLEMCHYLD The patch will not work with non-English versions. I have been asked to help with patching in different languages and I will do so when I'm done with RC . If you failed with the English version, I can send you the patched files (PM me if you want me to).

I'm ready to rebuild-finalize layout.inf files tomorrow. Will also add all _x for uncompressed files.
This will most likely fix the "access denied" issue, although I will test some additional stuff right now.

@maxtorix Windows XP SP4 RC will include some patches as an easter egg.

Hint: Find the unreferenced OC Manager INF file.

UPDATE: I abandoned the easter egg idea, because it can cause failure if different HAL is selected. I will upload an archive with the patched files only. These files, when used with SP4 should be digitally signed.

I have been trying to figure out how to "natively" add the Open file location for awhile to Windows XP. This is already built in when you right click the .LNK file and go to properties (there is a button)

Now, if somebody knew the GUID of this feature, maybe it can be added to the right click menu of .LNK files (like it is in Win7+) and not just the Properties so you don't have to rely on the hack method

Last edited by ricktendo64 on Thu Sep 25, 2014 2:27 am, edited 2 times in total.

harkaz wrote:
UPDATE: I abandoned the easter egg idea, because it can cause failure if different HAL is selected. I will upload an archive with the patched files only. These files, when used with SP4 should be digitally signed.

Yeah the hal will messy to setup automatically. BTW thanks for signing it.

@Rick

there is old free Findtarget shell extension under name FindTarget.dll that works for XP. what you're after?

This program is very useful and free solution because the old Word 2000 is the only program you can edit the "*.xml" files. Internet Explorer only allows you to view the files, and notepad and wordpad will save the .xml as a text file.

@harkaz
Are you aware of the Microsoft IE8 bug with the Quick Launch when uninstall the IE8? This will break the Quick Launch for new User Accounts and the IE8 shortcut in the Start menu (Accessories) is also not removed.
I have the fix for it from the YumeYao IE8 addon, if you need it i can post it.